February 12, 2013

My new Taki'scolumn looks at Richard III, both the real king recently dug up from a parking lot in England, and Shakespeare's hunchback Machiavel:

As Richard’s supporters, the Ricardians, like to complain, history is written by the victors. And the victorious Tudors had the best writer ever, William Shakespeare, whose patroness, Queen Elizabeth I, was Henry VII’s granddaughter.

What was so bad about Richard III? I offer an explanation calling upon the Darwinian insights of William D. Hamilton and Robert Trivers.

"Jokes, of course, could earn one a trip to the gulag, but even government officials told them. One journalist explained that he and his comrades con- vinced themselves that such humor was temporary because when all social problems were at last solved, 'there wouldn’t be any more jokes because there wouldn’t be anything left to joke about.'"

The Roman solution that produced Augustus and The Five Good Emperors was to adopt the member of your extended family best suited to rule as your eldest son and heir. That way the most deserving was assured of the throne, and there was no need to kill your cousins, who knew their children could rule if they distinguished themselves intellectually and in battle with the barbarians. The overrated Marcus Aurelius broke with this tradition and put his evil and stupid son Commodus on the thone.

Richard III had an excellent set of teeth. Some commenters expressed surprise, as there would have been no modern dentistry at the time. Actually most people of the day had good teeth and palate development because there was little to no sugar, and they tended to eat things that needed a lot of chewing. Another myth is that people were of miniscule height in the middle ages. Not at all. Even the hunchback Richard was 5'8'', about average even today. His older brother Edward, father of the two princes in the tower supposedly killed by their Uncle Richard, was 6'4''. It was later that people began to average shorter, at least in England.btw, Henry VII (Tudor), who likely delivered the death blow and took over the King job, probably ordered the death of the princes. I don't think he was very related to them, although the wife he married, Elizabeth Woodville, was related to them but probably didn't suspect Henry. The Tudors, a conflicted group, had good reason to want to believe their own myths about themselves.

Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and Richard III's niece, and sister of the "Princes in the Tower". Elizabeth had a better claim to the throne than her husband. Cousinhood everywhere..

The problem with the "Richard as a murdering bad guy" narrative is that it is founded entirely on claims made by the Tudors and people in service to the Tudors, often a rather long time after the events in question. These claims are not supported by accounts contemporary to the supposed events.

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